A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!

Speaking of the desperate and last ditch measures the Democrat Party is using to try to influence the progressives to vote Hillary instead of third party candidates check out this bold face lie from Elizabeth Warren and importantly, the reactions to this huge lie:

The Trans-Pecos Pipeline: Myths Texas Oil and Gas Want You to Swallow

By Lori Glover

Some
Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter members may remember a debate forty years
ago about a place called Boquillas, a village on the border of Big Bend
National Park. The Sierra Club rallied against electric lines running
across the avian migratory path of the Rio Grande. Some may see
similarities between that fight and the current fight against the
Trans-Pecos Pipeline. Is our opposition to the Trans-Pecos Pipeline an
example of privileged Americans shortsightedly refusing energy to poor
Mexico?

The Boquillas situation has little to no similarity with
the oil and gas industry’s current frantic push to pipe from the U.S.
into Mexico, but it does reinforce one of the many myths the oil and gas
industry promotes that the public is quick to swallow. You may have
seen the American Petroleum Institute’s Vote 4 Energy ads in places like
the New York Times Science Take videos. Each short video began with a
Vote Energy ad paid for by API featuring a wholesome mother and child or
young woman smiling and saying how important it is to continue using
fossil fuels as we develop renewable energy. This seemingly innocent
logic is a sneaky way of brainwashing the public into thinking we have
to continue sucking the earth dry of all its fossil fuels and despoil
the planet.

Myth #1: The Trans-Pecos Pipeline will provide desperately needed energy resources to the Mexican people.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA), “Mexico is one of the largest producers of petroleum and other
hydrocarbon liquids in the world, the fourth-largest producer in the
Americas after the United States, Canada, and Brazil.”
More
importantly, “Mexico has one of the world's largest shale gas resource
bases,” which could support increased natural gas production. According
to the EIA's assessment of world shale gas resources, Mexico has an
“estimated 545 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas
resources—the sixth largest of any country examined in the study.”
Mexico runs head-to-head with the United States and Canada in terms of
shale gas resources. Now that PEMEX has been deregulated, the American
oil and gas industry can frack in Mexico on a large scale. “Shale gas
will account for an estimated 45 percent of Mexico’s natural gas output
by 2026,” according to Emilio Godoy’s Inter Press Service article Fracking Expands Under the Radar on Mexican Lands.
Once Mexico taps into its vast shale resources, companies like Energy
Transfer Partners could profit from transporting natural gas back up the
Trans-Pecos Pipeline to the U.S. once our resources are no longer
profitable enough to extract.

The construction of the Trans-Pecos
Pipeline is not vital to the Mexican people because there are currently
natural gas pipelines passing into Mexico and new ones under
construction. At this very moment, Oneok Partners is burying the
Roadrunner pipeline from San Elizario, Texas, near El Paso, to Mexico.
San Elizario—a poor underserved Hispanic community with families on both
sides of the border—protested the pipeline to no avail. The Trans-Pecos
Pipeline alone will pump an additional 1.4 billion cubic feet of
natural gas to Mexico per day. “Current electricity generation output
that leverages natural gas in Mexico suggests Mexico may only need
approximately 10%” of what’s to be pushed through the Trans-Pecos Pipeline.

The
existence of the Trans-Pecos Pipeline along with the Roadrunner and
others are not contingent upon the energy resource needs of Mexico; they
are entirely dependent upon the continuing ability to make surplus
fracked natural gas available to foreign markets. Big money is looking
for the perfect port - an LNG terminal with few restrictions and less
opposition from environmentalists—BINGO: Mexico. In a conference held in
London on October 29, 2014, Pemex lured investors with plans to export
liquefied natural gas to Asia as part of a Transoceanic Corridor project.

Myth
#2: The Trans-Pecos Pipeline will provide natural gas to Mexico—a
cleaner energy than coal; thereby reducing carbon emissions and global
warming.
The Trans-Pecos Pipeline will deliver billions
of cubic feet of “fracked” natural gas to Mexico daily. Fracking
activities have been toxic to the environment and human health. Leaks of
the high-powered greenhouse gas methane abound. “In the United States,
methane emissions from natural gas distribution mains accounts for 32 percent of the industry's total methane emissions.”
Water sources all over the state and the world have been contaminated,
and the disposal wells have been linked to earthquakes. Natural gas may
burn cleaner but producing it is dirty business. There are no “clean”
fossil fuels and fracking specifically poses unacceptable risks to our
community, environment, and our climate, while producing methane—a
greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than CO2.
Mexico
currently burns less coal than the U.S. for energy production and based
on the Trans-Pecos Pipeline’s capacity, only a small percentage of its
gas would be needed to replace the coal power plants. So how is
promoting the continued large scale production of toxic “fracked” gas
necessary for the public good of Mexico or the U.S.?

Myth #3: Pipelines are safe and their footprint on the environment is small.
As
pipeline corporations build more and more pipelines faster and faster
to compete for profit, the number of pipeline accidents increases.
Between 2009 and 2014, there was an 87% increase in pipeline incidents. Recently, Cuero, Texas, experienced another fire at a pipeline compressor station less than a year after the last pipeline fire in Cuero. In April, the Texas Eastern pipeline in Salem, Pennsylvania, ruptured injuring one man and damaging several homes. On June 23, a pipeline leaked 700 barrels of crude oil into a canyon in Ventura, California. Pipelines are NOT safe and their environmental impact is massive.

A
pipeline explosion from a gas conduit the size of the Trans-Pecos
Pipeline could clear a swath of land a mile wide. Many families live
less than a mile from the Trans-Pecos Pipeline path. The constant winds
blowing down the Toronto and Sunny Glen canyons could fan the flames of
the explosion into the fastest spreading wildfire that community has
ever known. Fire from mere train trestle sparks in Toronto Canyon is a
constant threat to this community. In 2011, the Gage Holland Fire burned 6,000 of acres and nearly consumed several homes before it was subdued. In that same spring, the Schwartz Fire burned 30,000 acres and the Iron Mountain Fire
burned 15,000 acres. The Trans-Pecos Pipeline will cross underneath of
FM 1703, effectively cutting off the only entrance and exit for almost
200 homes in the Sunny Glen and Sunny Acres communities. Lives and
property may be lost, as will many populations of endangered and
threatened species.

Unfortunately, destruction from the
Trans-Pecos Pipeline is not merely a matter of future risk. Devastation
of the Trans-Pecos region is happening NOW. Construction of the
Trans-Pecos Pipeline is underway, clearing a 143 mile, 1-mile wide swath
with bulldozers and trenchers. This work will wreak havoc on the
nesting grounds of hundreds of migratory birds, disrupt and forever
alter the flow and function of the Alamito Creek watershed, and hasten
the expansion of desertification— which reduces habitat, food supply,
and eventually the populations of species such as the Texas Horned
Lizard, Black-Capped Vireo, Chihuahuan Mud Turtle, and the Silvery
Minnow.

Does the sanctity of one of the most pristine, wild
regions of Texas, the Big Bend—an icon of the cowboy culture and the
fierce, independent spirit of Texas, the home of one of the most
biodiverse desert regions in the world, the sanctuary of a long list of
endangered and threatened plant and animal species—need to be destroyed
to provide Mexico with a resource they already possess?
Is the
export of natural gas to overseas countries for the economic gain of
private industry worth the long term and possibly permanent destruction
of the delicate ecosystem of the Big Bend? Must all of Texas be
sacrificed to pipelines, oil wells, and gas wells? Is that the Texas we
want to the world to see? Must everyone and everything step aside
to line corporate pockets? Are our communities and our environment
acceptable collateral damage? Does profit equal public good?

The
planet is worth more than all the benefits the oil and gas industry PR
machine tosses out like confetti. The lives of the families living off
of FM 1703 in the Sunny Glen and Sunny Acres neighborhoods outside of
Alpine, Texas, are worth more than the “benefits” of the Trans-Pecos
Pipeline. Our air, our water, and our wildlife are worth more than the
“benefits” of the Trans-Pecos Pipeline. Preserving the Big Bend, an icon
of the cultural and environmental heritage of Texas, is worth more than
the Trans-Pecos Pipeline.

Join in the fight against the
Trans-Pecos Pipeline. It’s not too late. Write letters to the editor of
your local newspaper. Write to legislators. Contribute funds to groups
like the Big Bend Sierra Club (through the Lone Star Chapter),
Big Bend Conservation Alliance, Defend Big Bend, and Food and Water
Watch. Start meetings and protests in your town or make a trip to the
Big Bend to stand with us. Make your voices heard loud and clear.Photo courtesy of Traci Planck Felson

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Should we expect any resistance to the power barons of Mexico ? Well, according to the UN avoidance of the social costs of business in Mexico is basically "normal" and keep in mind what Marguerite Diaz told the Homeowners here at SADM, "...it is dangerous to be an environmentalist in Mexico" - so don't count on it.

What in the world do any of these events have to do with the drug war and Mexico? They are simply put, "oligopolistic hegemony over society" which will continue under Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Bottom line, this is bad news for the people and environment of Mexico and the United States yet good news for the most wealthy in Mexico and the United States. This type of dynamic will insure a continuation of environmental degradation both in the United States and Mexico and a continuation of the U.S. backed drug wars; it will be more of the same with little accountability favoring human or environmental rights.

Good Read: You can buy it cheap on ebay, or amazon:

"Corporate Power, Oligopolies and the Crisis of the State"
by, Luis Suarez-Villa

"Addresses the power of oligopolistic corporations in contemporary society.

The largest, wealthiest corporations have gained unprecedented power
and influence in contemporary life. From cradle to grave the decisions
made by these entities have an enormous impact on how we live and work,
what we eat, our physical and psychological health, what we know or
believe, whom we elect, and how we deal with one another and with the
natural world around us. At the same time, government seems ever more
subservient to the power of these oligopolies, providing numerous forms
of corporate welfare—tax breaks, subsidies, guarantees, and
bailouts—while neglecting the most basic needs of the population. In Corporate Power, Oligopolies, and the Crisis of the State,
Luis Suarez-Villa employs a multidisciplinary perspective to provide
unprecedented documentation of a growing crisis of governance, marked
by a massive transfer of risk from the private sector to the state,
skyrocketing debt, great inequality and economic insecurity, along with
an alignment of the interests of politicians and a new, minuscule but
immensely wealthy and influential corporate elite. Thanks to this
dysfunctional environment, Suarez-Villa argues, stagnation and a
vanishing public trust have become the hallmarks of our time.

“Suarez-Villa … has performed a great service with this readable,
analytical, and well-researched book … This is a must-order book for
libraries … Highly recommended.” — CHOICE

“This book
makes a substantial contribution to the literature, particularly to
the field of political economy. It is unique and much needed for the
way it draws links between a wide and diverse range of social,
economic, and political phenomena through a sophisticated and powerful
theoretical analysis. Luis Suarez-Villa manages to paint the big
picture while touching upon detailed developments in numerous
fields—not unlike the great political economists of the nineteenth
century.” — Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyways...I heard they were humming this over there in Texas , but that could be a rumor....: